Properties worth millions of Naira were destroyed in a fire incident which gutted the male hostel of the college of medicine, University of Lagos Teaching Hospital, Idi-Araba.
Starting at about 10.am on Wednesday from room 648, the fire spread to room 647 on the third floor of Block6, Alliakilu Hostel.
One of the occupants of room 648 who said that he was not able to save their property, stated that around 10.am, he was playing football when he saw some students running all over the place.
“On getting there, I noticed that it was my room that was on fire, I tried to put out the fire, but it was sointense that it soon spread to the next room. The fire was raging because we couldn’t get fire extinguisher which was in the hostel manager’s room.
“Also, there was no water on the floor, so we had to go down stairs toget water which we used in putting off the fire,” adding that some minutes later, they “were able to get fire extinguishers and attempted to put out the fire.”
It was learnt that a commercial motorcycle operator, who had come to assist in dousing the flames sustained eye injury and was immediately rushed to LUTH which is within the premises. Fire service men arrived about an hour after the students had almost quenched the fire.
Another occupant of room 648 identified as Henry said it was the third time there had been a fire incident. He noted that, although the immediate cause could not be ascertained, it could likely be due topower fluctuation.
“According to him, there were electric sparks in the room sometime early this year (April) while we were attempting to installa ceiling fan. Some wire got burnt inthe process, a few months back, a socket in the room sparked and it caused a blackout on the whole floor. After that incident, engineers came to repair it but since then, no permanent solution has been found.The engineers demanded money forthe repair from us and after giving them they did not solve the problem”.
He blamed the school authorities fornot providing enough fire fighting equipment; he stressed that, the occupants of room 607were a bit lucky to save some of their properties form the fire.
“My SSSCE Certificate, my N25,000, my laptop and other valuables wereconsumed in the inferno,” Henry said.
Reacting to the incident, Public Relations Officer (PRO) of the college Mr.Olusesan Odejimi said, “only two rooms were affected and not the entire building, there was no form of casualty”.